Nobody panic! Molyneux says he's fixed free-to-play gaming

Tell Dungeon Keeper to throw away the key

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Good God or vengeful God?

Free-to-play gaming is under heavy fire right now, no thanks to Dungeon Keeper and its misadventures in in-app purchases.

Peter Molyneux has already called the new mobile game "ridiculous", but the brain behind the original Dungeon Keeper reckons he might also have the solution to the F2P problem in his upcoming God simulation game, Godus.

"What we need is a new term. And that term is more like 'invest-to-play'," he told Pocket Gamer. "We are tempting people to invest some of their money into a game."

He said that there will be monetisation seen in Godus "that hasn't existed before", which will be "fresh and as new and as different from anything you've ever seen."

God of lure

According to Molyneux, the key is "to tempt people to think about being proud about investing."

On the state of many current free-to-play titles, he added: "We're saying: 'Be patient or pay money.' That's not a delightful mechanic. That's not going to get people to invest their money."

Molyneux's made some pretty lofty claims in the past only to go on to disappoint, so we'll stay cautiously optimistic about this one.

In the same interview, Molyneux revealed he had an idea to follow up his Curiosity app with a game where one million people had to push a box up a hill by tapping their iPhones at the same time.